It’s back to the birds for any Pennsylvania hunter willing to brave the cold and take wing shots.

This year the Pennsylvania Game Commission stocked about 220,000 pheasants across the state – after a few years of drastic cuts blamed on a lack of funding and attributed to the failure of the state legislature to approve a hunting license increase.

But I’m not going out on a limb when I say that, with Marcellus Shale revenue, the PGC is now flush with cash, certainly compared to what had been in its pockets when the pheasant stocking program was held political hostage.

With the new revenue, and the operation of four state game farms, the PGC has returned to stocking more than 200,000 pheasants – with an annual goal of 250,000 in the future — up from the pitiful 100,000 birds stocked from 2005 to 2011.

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Yet from all I’ve heard and seen, the renewed effort has not garnered the hunter interest and enthusiasm the PGC had hoped. Anecdotally, the same folks that hunted pheasant during the stocking downturn are in the field but many “lost” hunters have not returned to the fold. According to PGC statistics, 88,307 hunters pursued pheasant in 2011 — while the stocking cuts were still in force — but only 87,341 hunted last year when pheasant numbers returned to current levels. In the heady days of the late 70s, Pennsylvania had 750,000 pheasant hunters.

So the adage may be, “Build it and they will come,” but the addendum is, “Once lost is often forgotten.”

Yet is it solely the pheasant numbers or — at least here in the southeast — fewer hunting opportunities that are keeping sportsmen at home?

Across the state the double-barrel season for pheasant opens tomorrow, Dec. 16, with restrictions on sex depending on which Wildlife Management Unit is hunted. The season runs until Dec. 24, shuts down for Christmas Day, then loads another chamber on Dec. 26 running all the way to Feb. 22.

In the southeast corner of the state, in Wildlife Management units 5C and 5D which includes all of Montgomery and Bucks counties as well as major portions of Chester and Berks counties and a unpheasanty sliver of Lancaster County, hunters can harvest both male and female pheasant.

However in surrounding WMU 5B, which includes the western half of Berks, an unpheasanty sliver of Chester County, and most of Lancaster County, the regulations allow hunters to take only male pheasants. That also holds true for southcentral WMU 5A as well as other four other WMUs.

The daily limit is two birds with a total field possession of four birds.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission conducts what it terms the “X-mas Season” stocking for the last in-season stocking of pheasant. The shipping date for stocking is listed as the week of December 20, but the PGC advises that there is a two- to three-day window when actual stocking takes place.

In Montgomery County, PGC allocation tables indicate that only one State Game Land is stocked, SGL 234. This game land is divided into two widely spaced tracts, one in Linfield the other west of Schwenksville.

According to the PGC tables, a total of 1,350 male pheasants were stocked in Montgomery County this year along with 530 hen pheasants. For the X-mas stocking 90 hens will be placed in the county stocking site.

Other than SGL 234, the best bet for birds in the Pottstown Mercury’s super sphere of influence is in Berks County around Blue Marsh and Lake Ontelaunee and also State Game Lands 106, 182 and 280.

At those sites pheasant hunters will have to rely on the survival of birds that were stocked during four in-season stockings starting in late October-early November and continuing to the fourth in-season stocking just before Thanksgiving. The fifth in-season stocking, the X-Mass season, will see a low number of birds, just 40, and they are all hens. Nevertheless I took a hike around the grounds and game lands of Blue Marsh the Sunday after Thanksgiving and heard some cocks cackling.

Somewhat closer to Pottstown are the stockings at Marsh Creek State Park in Chester County. The state park is one of four locations in Chester County that received stocked pheasant totaling 1,320 cocks and 2,780 hens. For the “X-mas” stocking, 230 hen birds will be placed in Chester County’s stocking location.

Another reasonable location for Mercury readers is Nockamixon State Park in Bucks County. According to the PGC there is only one location in Bucks County that receives stocked pheasants and that is Nockamixon off Route 563 east of Quakertown. PGC allocation figures show that 1,080 hens and 390 cock birds were stocked in Bucks County for this hunting year. For the X-mas stocking the state park gets 70 hens.

If you want to travel a little for winter pheasant, I suggest the Delaware Water Gap tract east of Route 209 centered around Dingmans Ferry.

There’s a wide strip of agricultural and river woodland between the highway and the western shore of the Delaware River that makes for an interesting hunt. Access is found from a number of tractor paths along the main road. For the X-mas stocking 200 hens are going in the Pike County section of the tract and another 190 hens in the Monroe County slice.

The sad recent history of pheasant hunting in Pennsylvania is all there in the numbers. Pheasant harvest peaked between 1970 and 1985 with as many as 1.3 million wild and stocked birds taken in the early-70s. Since 1990 that number has dramatically declined from 400,000 birds to 141,000 birds in 2006, to its present estimate of around 200,000 birds.

I recall those great days, mainly in late 60s and 70s when I hunted farms from Center Valley, through Harleysville, and on both side of the Schuylkill River in Montgomery County. Now few of those farms exist, given way to unchecked sprawl.

But I also have to point out, that it has been years and years since the PGC purchased any land in the southeast corner for game lands. The PGC is buying land with shale money, but not around here.

So you might have the birds but if there’s no place to hunt, what’s the point?

About the Author

Vic Attardo has been writing about the outdoors since age 6 when he caught his first magnetic fish in a bath tub and captured the tale with crayon.
Since then he has published literally hundreds of outdoors stories in national and state magazines.
He is currently a contributing editor to the Pennsylvania Angler and Boater, the official Pa. Fish and Boat Commission magazine; fish and tackle editor for Fur-Fish-Game and his work appears in every issue of the Pennsylvania Outdoor News. He is also featured in the Cabela's Outdoor Journal, the F&W Ice Annual, New York Outdoor News and many others. Reach the author at vicattardo@gmail.com
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